


She Drowned Yesterday

by Zayrastriel



Series: The Drowning 'verse [2]
Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Zombie Apocalypse, done for a request and spiraled into a series with plot, much like the one before this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:39:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zombie apocalypse, craziness, older-than-is-normal boyfriends, whatever; they’re still friends.<br/>Even if one of them can’t remember some of the time, and the other two are holding on with everything they’ve got to whatever they’ve got.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Drowned Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Strictly speaking this isn't actually fanfiction because hey, it could totally happen (this is set in around 2017.)

**Lia**

Past-her (and she’d like to say ‘me when I was young and naïve and immature and 18’, but if she’s gonna be honest with herself she’s talking up to immediate pre-zombies) would probably find this situation awesome.  Maybe not the near-deaths that are actually getting boring, they’re happening so often, but she’s working with two of her friends in what can only be described as a _zombie apocalypse AU! Gore, horror, fighting_ fanfic.

Complete with Tom Hiddleston (though admittedly, up till about five months ago when the world started ending right back home in Australia, past-her would probably have smashed his face in on sight.)

Now-her would shoot him in an instant if it would bring anything back.  If somehow, some weird-ass Norse God (they’re totally close enough for all of that to count, right?  At least according to _Supernatural_ ) would be satisfied and somehow get the crazy out of Ara’s head.

“Are you alright?” Tom asks her softly, leaning his bow against a peeling wall and wiping a hand across his brow (And this is surreal, Tom was telling her about how he honestly thought he’d been dropped in some ultra-modern surrealist painting when she’d rescued him, but Lia is talking to _Tom Hiddleston_ (other things too, but she won’t think about those right now in the middle of the day, that beats modern art by a mile.)

“Hmm?”

Oh, awks; she’s been staring blankly in his direction for like ten minutes.

"You’re getting good.”

And that’s true (annoyingly true, he bloody well saved her _life_ barely a week after he arrived and that is just embarrassing.)  Buteurgh, her voice sounds flat and about as insincere as is humanly possible-

“Lia.”

It’s Ara, standing in the doorway.  “I’m going out with some of the guys,” she says, voice devoid of any sort of expression.

Another mark of how things have changed.  Past her would have said something about man-ising.  Now-her bites her lip.  “Be careful.”

Ara smiles, feral and humourless.  “Yeah, whatever.”

Her friend turns away, leaving them alone.

When she glances back up at Tom, he frowns, stepping forwards slightly. “Your lip is bleeding.”

Oops.  She’s bitten straight through it, she realises, only belatedly recognising the sting and the coppery tang of blood on her tongue.

Before she can reach up to brush  it away, his finger is already there, stemming the flow.

Okay, so now-her or not, she is _not at all prepared for this_.

“The communications technicians said they’re going to be ready to try broadcasting a signal in a couple of weeks,” he murmurs as he finally draws his hand away… _licking his goddamn finger_.

“I.  Uh.  Sorry.  _What_?”  Her brain has shut down; defence mechanism in case her head explodes from the fuzzy feels.

“The communications technicians,” Tom repeats, and okay no one can be smiling like that and not realise just what they’re doing.

 _Eurgh_.  She shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts enough to actually say something coherent.  “And that means…what, exactly?” she finally manages.

He smirks, before the expression softens into sincere happiness.  “We’ll be able to send out messages again.  Texts, calls; if anyone else in the world is still online – in a manner of speaking, anyway – we can _contact_ them.”

Open-mouthed, she stares at him, words processing in her mind.

Then, uncaring of the sweatiness, she lunges forwards and wraps her arms around his neck, burrowing her face into his chest as he brings his arms around her, warm and _there_.

She hasn’t been thinking about her other friends; can’t do it, because if they’re…she can’t even think the word.  But – if three out of three that came to the Netherlands are still alive (she sort of has her doubts about Ara, but she pushes them aside for now) then it’s perfect.

His hands go to her shoulder, pushing her back slightly.  She’s confused till he leans down, brushing his mouth against hers softly.  When he pulls away, he’s smiling.

“Thank you,” she says honestly. 

“Believe me, that wasn’t exactly a chore on my part.”

She smiles back.

She can’t trade him in for Ara.  He can’t make her situation magically better, unless he’s actually Loki who’s been playing Tom Hiddleston playing Loki, and as wonderful an idea as that is, it’s probably not true.

(Probably. You never know.)

But he _distracts_ her.  Nothing’s gotten better. 

But that doesn’t matter, because for the first time in the last few months, she’s really feeling it.

 _Hope_.

 

~

 

**Raine**

She tries, she really does.

No, really.  Honestly.

But it is fricking _hard_.  Getting Ara to talk about feelings before was easy.

(Getting her to feel them in front of you, a completely different story; but hey, it was something.)

Besides, and she doesn’t say this to Lia because Lia is a tender soul who can’t face the cruel, brutal truth of the world (well, such truths as aren’t implicit in the whole zombie apocalypse thing), she’s not entirely positive that there’s anything anyone can say. 

So she watches her friend fight a losing battle with her own head, and she does the only thing she can to help.

Weapons design. 

It’s fun, if she forgets just why she’s doing it.  She never thought it’d turn out this way, she being the one with the queasy stomach when Lia used to complain about killing _cockroaches_ – but that’s the way it is.

It’s not a bad place to work, either; until they figured out about the wood, it was a race against time as they waited for the zombies to breach the walls around this town (and bloody fricking hell were they lucky that Lia had dragged them both here _en route_  to Zurich because of architecture and archery.)  Once they’d figured it out; well, this town was designed a _long_ time ago to be able to withstand a siege for years on end, so long as someone knew how to milk a cow and another was game enough to butcher it.

(The last took them a while, but they got there.)

Hiddles (she refuses, absolutely refuses, to call him _Tom_ like he’s not some creep who’s more than ten years older than them, and his eyes tighten in annoyance every time she calls him _Hiddles_ so it’s absolutely perfect) told them about the food situation in New York when he left.

On a plane.

Because rich people are _rich_ , and wow inequality really is (was) an issue.

Anyway, compared to New York, this town is fucking paradise. Small but sufficient fields for grazing, fertile ground; anything you could want in a _fricking apocalypse_.  They’re slowly extending the walls, night by night with flashlights and fire; the zombies love the heat, but clearly fire’s a bit too much for their dry, peeling bodies, and the night is the best time because any strays that are still hanging around could literally be taken down with a toothpick.

She is still pretty proud of that.  Major street cred raise, right there.

They’ve established contact with a couple of other towns around; towns and small hideouts of terrified but determined humans, a mixture of tourists and native Dutch.

They’re getting somewhere.  Lia, that old perve Hiddles trailing behind her like a lost puppy (except puppies are _cute_ , and while if hard-pressed she’ll grudgingly admit that maybe he’s not exactly unattractive, he’s definitely not _puppy_ material), came to tell her the news about the communications.  If they can spread the news about the wood, the cold, the dark…maybe.

It’s a _maybe_ , the idea that they could save the world.

But it’s something.

They’re getting somewhere.

 

~

 

**Ara**

Days pass in blurs and sluggish frozen moments now.  Moments of clarity that intersperse washed-out conversations and smiles and _I’m fine_ s; that’s what she’s been left with.

The last day-of-real was when they turned on the TV in their hotel and saw the fragments of video from Sydney.

She doesn’t think about it much, because she replays it constantly in her head.  It’s the baseline now, undercutting the _you’re worthless_ with _you could have saved them_ , _fancy words and stakes in the ground, and you’re killing but you’re too late_.

Everything divides itself up neatly; into good days, bad days, and _days_.

(But since ‘day’ means nothing to her anymore, she’s left to guess when one ends and another.)

On good days, kills aren’t the only thing she remembers.  Sometimes it’s the food that stands out; she’s vaguely aware that she used to love food, used to love the sensation of taste, of going from _haven’t-eaten-all-day_ to _I’m-full_. 

Normally, she enjoys little but the increasingly complex and effective ways she and Raine are coming up with to wipe them out (atone _but it’s never going to happen_ ).

But on good days, the typically endless surge of _useless worthless you didn’t help us you are nothing we loved you who loves you now useless_ dulls to a distant murmur in the back of the mind, and she can’t quite remember what it was about the news report that snuffed out something in her.

It’s on a good day that she emerges from the haze (of food and five hours sleep a night and exercise and clarity in the shape and guise of screaming zombies) to hear Lia tell her, cautious excitement in her tone, _guess who I picked up just outside the gates_ , and Raine’s irritated _okay seriously, apocalypse or not, he’s still_ way _too old for you_.

She’s happy for Lia on good days; sad that she’s lost whatever would have, a few years ago before time stopped, made her faint at the sight of Tom Hiddleston, but happy that, in some way, it’s starting to come around for her.  She’s amused at Raine’s age issues – understanding, sure, but then after the Alan Rickman addiction, she supposes she’s down with anything.  Tom’s nice enough, and he looks at her occasionally like she’s crazy but equally like she’s amusing or intelligent or worthy of respect.  On good days, they’re satisfied.  Not happy, but satisfied.

On bad days, she can’t remember who Tom Hiddleston is. 

She sees concerned eyes set in an angular face, high cheekbones more prominent than she feels she should remember when she goes to pick up weapons.  “Be careful, dude,” she hears as she’s shown how to use this latest invention, or how doing _this_ will capitalise on this new thing they’re trying out. Ara thanks her and tries to act like she’s known the other person long enough that _dude_ would be normal between them.

 _Weather,_ she thinks vaguely.  _Something to do with storms_.

Hunting is the only fixed point on bad days.

On _days_ , she knows why it’s the only fixed point.

On _days_ , she remembers everything, and as she watches fifty or so zombies run to their deaths over rows of sharpened stakes about fifteen kilometres out of town, she finds fifty more ways she could have saved her parents.

_But despite everything –_

_Days_ are happening less and less, she thinks, maybe (not that she’s entirely sure she’d remember.)  She’s having a bad day when Raine (because that’s her name, precipitation with an extra ‘a’, they’ve been friends for years and she refuses to keep forgetting even if her mind isn’t obeying her) tells her that Tom’s heard from the technicians that communications might go online again, sometime soon. 

She’s still got the phone with international roaming, prepaid credit that wasn’t meant to expire for a year, and her sister’s number saved on it (also etched into her mind seared into her soul).

Yesterday (maybe) Tom sat down with her and asked her if she was _sure_ it was her parents she’d seen on the news.

She didn’t hit him, she didn’t scream.

Hope can’t be legal, she thinks, because it hurts like hell.

But it’s rekindling.

**Fin**


End file.
